One argument used to support the idea that employment will continue to be the dominant form. of work, and that employment will eventually become available for all who want it, is that working time will continue to fall. People in jobs will work fewer hours in the day, fewer days in the week, fewer weeks in the year, and fewer years in a lifetime, than they do now. This will mean that more jobs will be available for more people. This, it is said, is the way we should set about restoring full employment.

There is no doubt that something of this kind will happen. The shorter working week, longer holidays, earlier retirement, job-sharing -- these and other ways of reducing the amount of time people spend on their jobs -- are certainly likely to spread. A mix of part-time paid work and part-time unpaid work is likely to become a much more common work pattern than today, and a flexi-life pattern of work -- involving paid employment at certain stages of life, but not at others -- will become widespread. But it is surely unrealistic to assume that this will make it possible to restore full employment as the dominant form. of work.

In the first place, so long as employment remains the overwhelmingly important form. of work and source of income for most people that it is today, it is very difficult to see how reductions in employees' working time can take place on a scale sufficiently large and at a pace sufficiently fast to make it possible to share out the available paid employment to everyone who wants it. Such negotiations as there have recently been, for example in Britain and Germany, about the possibility of introducing a 35-hour working week, have highlighted some of the difficulties. But, secondly, if changes of this kind were to take place at a pace and on a scale sufficient to make it possible to share employment among all who wanted it, the resulting situation --in which most people would not be working in their jobs for more than two or three short days a week -- could hardly continue to be one in which employment was still regarded as the only truly valid form. of work. There would be so many people spending so much of their time on other activities, including other forms of useful work, that the primacy of employment would be bound to be called into question, at least to some extent.

The author uses the negotiations in Britain and Germany as an example to

A．support reductions in employees' working time.

B．indicate employees are unwilling to share jobs.

C．prove the possibility of sharing paid employment.

D．show that employment will lose its dominance.